


After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relatives

by LiveOakWithMoss, TheLionInMyBed



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Cannibalism, Canonical Character Death, Funeral Customs, Gen, Gondolin, No sadism but definite grotesquerie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-04 19:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12175605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiveOakWithMoss/pseuds/LiveOakWithMoss, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLionInMyBed/pseuds/TheLionInMyBed
Summary: A man is never dead while his name’s still spoken, the Edain say.Say the Eldar: one is never lost whose taste is yet on someone’s lips, whose heart is still in someone’s belly.If Maeglin thought the Elves of Gondolin were taking poetic license, it was not for long.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Cannibalism AU thanks to [this post](http://tyelpings.tumblr.com/post/155330777680/so-there-was-a-post-going-around-about-how-elves) and subsequent out of control headcanoning. It....made sense to us at the time.

**_Idril_ **

Aredhel Ar-Feiniel had never been more worthy of her name. Even before the poison, Idril had been shocked at her pallor, at the strong, bronzed arms that had carried her across the Ice gone mushroom-white. Now she looked like one of the wraiths that she’d whispered stories of in a freezing sealskin tent, long years ago. She looked like the last glimpse of Elenwë when they had pulled her from the water.

Dying or not, Aredhel was Aredhel and flashed her niece her wolfish grin. “I didn’t have as much time to explore as I might have liked. I saw you’d finished the library on my way up, though - those flying buttresses!”

“Did you like them?” Idril said shyly, perversely, as though they were talking over tea and not a deathbed. The canopy’s silk hangings were a delicate shade of blue, the same awful colour as the veins showing in her aunt’s wrists where they hung limply from the cuffs of her nightgown.

“They were _beautiful_ ,” said Aredhel, with feeling. “I’d ask how you built the piers so slim, but. Well. I have a few farewells to make and not a lot of time.”

“I’ve missed you so much!” She was the Lady of Gondolin, her father’s right hand, a woman grown, and above childish displays of petulance. Still, she stamped her bare foot upon the tiles so hard pain shot from her heel up to her hip. “This isn’t fair at all.” Her voice wavered and cracked.

“Ah, Celebrindal.” Aredhel’s arms were weak as she pulled Idril close, and that made Idril sob harder. “Nothing’s been fair a good long time, but we keep fighting, don’t we? I can’t say this is how I hoped that things would end but I’m glad to know that even when I’m gone I’ll still be with you, lending you strength. What better death could I ask?”

“I’ll be honoured,” Idril said, wiping her eyes.

Aredhel kissed her cheek and then flopped back against her pillows. For the first time, her expression flickered, fierce determination replaced with something like disquiet. “My son’s father did not keep civilised customs, or let me raise Lómion to them. I thought there would be time but there wasn’t and now I do not know how much he understands. Still, my heart is his. I think he will have need of my courage before the end.”

“I’ll see that he understands,” said Idril. She was not sure what to make of the strange, sad boy, with his staring and his silences. He seemed nothing at all like Aredhel and too much like the ghastly creature that had murdered her. But he must be frightened and grieving even more than she, so Idril would be kind no matter how little she liked those flat, black eyes. “Shall I fetch him for you now?”

“No need.” Languidly - when had her aunt _ever_ been languid? - Aredhel extended an arm towards the doorway. “Lómion. Darling. Come here. There is something you must do.”

What Idril had taken for the shadow cast by a tapestry detached itself and came scuttling across the rug towards them.

Not a monster, Idril told herself, stifling a gasp. Just a boy.

“Mother?” he said, and Idril heard in his voice the same waver, the same scratchiness she heard in her own. He was pale - as pale as Aredhel but not, Idril thought, thanks to ill health - but his skin was red and blotchy, his nose and eyes scrubbed raw.

Just a boy. It was suddenly easier to believe.

“I know I said I’d be your guide but our family does have a history of making promises we can’t keep,” said Aredhel, with a smirk. “Your uncle and your cousin will have to show you the city. Which is a shame since Turgon doesn’t know where _any_ of the good taverns are. You will have to discover them for yourself.”

“You said that you’d be with her,” said the boy in that small, husky voice. Perhaps resentful, perhaps merely confused; his face gave little away.

“And so I will. With her and you and everyone here that loves me.” Aredhel’s smile was solemn now. “There are rites to be done but they’re mostly for show. There’s only one thing that matters.

“You must eat me.”

* * *

**_Turgon_ **

It had not been a tradition much practiced in the Blessed Realm. There was little need of it in the Light of the Trees when no terrors stalked them in the darkness and none fell before the blades of kin. Still, the First Awakened kept the knowing of it alive – Finwë spoke of keeping the old ways and not letting their memories fade – and on occasion it had been necessary. A hunter thrown from their horse; a child fallen in the river; an accident in the forge, as had happened to a classmate in Turgon’s youth. They kept the ceremonial knives sharp and students had dedicated themselves to crafting beautiful gut hooks and corpse spits for the beloved dead.

They knew what was expected if death came. They prepared for it as the Noldor prepared for everything, with scholarship and craft.

They had not expected the practice to become so routine.

The first time Death touched their family was before the gates of Formenos, and from the first hour of that evil message nothing went as it should. Turgon never forgot his father’s agony when Fëanor, in his great pain and greater spite, had committed the cruelty of withholding Finwë’s body from the rest of his children. Turgon had watched as Fingolfin sat vigil sunk deep in his grief, his hands empty and his mouth tight shut as he fasted for a final farewell that would never come. For hours into days his father had mourned and starved and his mother had paced and cursed, until their eldest cousin had appeared on their doorstep, his long face pale and a bloody bundle in his arms. Fingolfin had wept in gratitude and Fingon’s eyes had shone with ferocious love, but Turgon had thought that it was just good politics – the first sign that Maedhros had always known how best to leverage a pound of flesh.

The carving of the lean flank of Finwë had been their first feast for the departed. It would not be the last.

In time, Turgon understood how those sacred mouthfuls had given his father peace in his pain. On the ice the ritual sustained him, sustained them all, and even as they wept they thanked the dead for giving them the strength to continue. The skinning knives they brought with them were not the beautifully wrought ones that hung in the houses of the undying in Valinor, but ones they used to butcher seal and bear. They plied them with no less reverence when the skins they lifted were those of family and if they thanked the Valar less for their mercy it was only because they were subject to different forces now.

But even their toughest knives had turned aside on the frozen skin of Turgon’s beloved.

They had pulled Elenwë from the water frozen almost too fast for the last goodbye. Turgon had lost himself to grief, close to throwing himself into the frozen water that had taken her from him; only his siblings’ hands and the thought of his daughter had kept him on the ice. He knew now how his father must have felt to be robbed so of his last precious contact with the beloved dead. He had blessed Fingon’s strong shoulder against his, his brother’s whispered words of comfort, and the fire he had stoked on the blowing waste. He had blessed even further Aredhel’s skill with a knife and how tenderly she had parted skin from flesh in mimic of how the soul departed the body. Some magic of her blade let her through the frozen skin and muscle and she had reached into Elenwë’s breast to withdraw her heart and hand it to him. He had seen the pain in her own handsome face, rawboned in the cold and streaked with tears, but she did not wail as he did. She simply drew Idril close and lifted the child's mittened hands to receive a lump of her mother’s brave heart.

To this day he looked at his daughter, grown tall and strong and wise and beautiful and thanked the strength her mother’s flesh had given her to keep her alive in the desolate north. To keep her beating and blessed.

Many more had fallen upon the ice. Their knives were in frequent use. Their bellies stayed full. And when they arrived in Beleriand and sounded their silver horns and met the host of Morgoth under the moon, they fought imbued with the strength of those lost and each Elf was as ten Elves, lit from within by their still burning spirits.

Turgon had bled the hearts of many he had loved, and he had wept again to have his own father’s body returned to him, years later, that he might bid him goodbye. They had dressed his body on the mountaintop where the eagle had left him and once again Aredhel was at his side with strong hands and nimble knife and between them they split the king’s heart. (Fingon, who should have eaten with them, was a weighty absence at Turgon’s side but Turgon did not doubt the forces that had brought him from his brother’s presence, as he did not question the forces that had delivered his father’s last remains.)

The continuation of the dead had always been a great comfort to Turgon, and it was his only solace in the loss of Aredhel – a treasure too late returned to him. He prepared her with his own hands, plucked his own herbs for the roasting, and let Idril use Aredhel’s own blade in the skinning. _Goodbye_ he murmured, as Idril separated skin from flesh from bone from organ. _Goodbye, goodbye_ he sang and wept as he made his sister ready for her last journey. _Goodbye_ he said a final time as the spit crackled and popped, and felt some burden lift from his heart.

And so it was that when he held out his sister’s warm and bleeding heart to her son he expected the boy to hold out his hands to receive it, rather than recoil and knock it to the floor with a heavy splat.

* * *

**_Salgant_ **

In that silent court, one might have heard a pin fall. Or a second heart.

Turgon stood still as one entombed in ice, his bloody hands outstretched. Idril gave one shrill, soft cry and then clamped her own hands over her mouth.

The boy cringed back from them both and from the heart upon the floor and its spreading red corona.

Standing with the other courtiers, Salgant’s gut clenched with the same horror and revulsion that showed so plainly upon the face of the king. But Salgant alone did not let it control him. Salgant alone stepped forwards and, dropping to his knees, lifted the fallen heart. It had not lain upon the tiles five seconds - even that was an ignobility that so noble a princess did not deserve, but it would be worse by far to leave her where she lay.

It was still warm in his hands as he raised it up, and heavy with the great spirit that it had housed. It smelt good, rich and metallic, and his mouth began to water.

“My lord-” what was the boy’s name? “-Maeglin,” he said. He had coaxed secrets from behind Ecthelion’s tight lips, lulled suspicious Rog into confiding in him, and so it was easy now to keep his voice gentle. “Please. Eat.”

Wordless, Maeglin shook his head. His eyes were red and his unbound hair fell dark and wild about his shoulders. He did not look like a prince, but a prince he was and so Salgant smiled encouragingly and offered again. “For your mother, my lord. Just one bite, it is what she would have wanted. Think how strong she will make you! The boldest of all the children of Fingolfin.” That was easily said while Turgon stood beside his thone, pale-faced and shaking. “Come, my prince. Eat.”

As water erodes stone, Salgant’s cajoling slowly took effect, enough that the boy uncurled from his crouch and let Salgant press the heart back into his hands, careful to support it lest he drop it again.

The urge to look back at the king and the princess to gauge their reactions was very strong, but Salgant was stronger and kept his eyes forwards, kept mouthing soothing platitudes as he guided the heart to the boy’s lips.

“One bite,” he said. “Just one bite.” He might write a song of this after, with his own part only tastefully alluded to.

One bite, it seemed, was too much for this half-breed, godless creature. Maeglin bit down with a wet, tearing sound and then recoiled, gagging, blood and spit smeared about his mouth.

Behind them, Turgon moaned, a noise that would have been more fitting coming from the mouth of a wounded dog than the King of Gondolin.

Salgant reeled back, the heart clutched safely to his chest just as Idril leapt forwards. She leant over the boy and took him by his shaking shoulders, her golden hair and pale mantle falling forwards to hide him from the view of the court.

“Thank you, Salgant,” she said. “Please give Princess Aredhel to my father.” She raised her voice so that her next words were heard by all. “My cousin is not well. Please, let us begin the feast now - as we all know, my aunt did not like to wait - and he shall join us when he may.”

The room was full of whispers as she drew Maeglin away in the direction of the royal apartments, glancing back to her father only once. The king did not see. He was staring too fixedly at the pool of blood and bile upon the floor.

“You heard the princess!” Salgant cried, because someone had to, trained voice drowning out the susurrus of disquiet. “Let the feast begin!”

* * *

**_Maeglin_ **

The courtier’s voice echoed in his ears like the ringing of bells, but in the corridor off the great hall the murmur of talk and the clink of utensils was barely audible. He had thought he would be led back to the chambers near where his mother had died and he unconsciously resisted the arm around his shoulders. But rather than the vast chamber with the white bed he found himself in a small room, soft with dust and disuse. The arm around him was withdrawn.

Maeglin hunched over, his stomach still cramping horribly, his fingers fixed in rigid claws and smeared with blood. He tried to unlock them, tried to free them from their rictus, but he could feel the weight of the heart as if it rested between them even now. The blood on his hands looked no different from the blood of a rabbit or a grouse, and those he had eaten willingly enough on the days he had been Bad, shut up below and not allowed a fire, and even now there was blood under his fingernails, gristle between his teeth, and it had been so much like digging into the soft raw belly of a rabbit, the gore smearing his lips and face and clotting under his nose –

He gagged again but this time there was something to retch into, a bowl held out for him by brown, gold-ringed fingers.

“There you go,” said a low, gentle voice. “Do not worry. You can be sick if you have to, no one is watching now.”

Maeglin clutched the bowl and heaved into it, tears and snot streaming down his face, all the misery and terror of recent days scalding his throat on the way out. A tangled curl of his hair dipped towards the bowl, and once more those gold and brown fingers were there, holding it back.

“Here,” said the voice again, and he felt his hair fastened back behind his ears, the heavy weight of a clip resting against his scalp.

When he could finally unbend he raised his eyes, gasping and snuffling, and the princess took the bowl from him, averting her eyes as she tucked it into the garderobe. Wordlessly she handed him a cloth to blot his lips and a glass of water and he drank for what felt like the first time in days. There was salt caked on him as thick as misery and once the water hit his tongue he drank greedily, making gulping, shuddering sounds as he did.

When he had finished he set down the glass and looked around him, realizing that for the first time since he arrived his eyes were not hurting him from the light that bounced from every surface in the city. This room was dim and cool, full of comforting shadows, easy to absorb and navigate. He looked at the princess again, now that he could do so without blinking. In the low light of the room she alone was neither dim nor shadowy, but nor did she blaze like the shining turrets of the palace or the gold ornaments of the throne room. Instead she seemed to glow like the last ember of a fire, like a flame shielded by one of his father’s night lamps; like the bright-bugs of late summer that he used to hunt with his mother.

“I have to return to the fea – funeral,” said the princess in the same soft voice – not the over-loud, woeful boom of the king or the shrill chatter of his courtiers, but closer to the soothing murmur of the fat Noldo who had aided him in the hall.  “Do not worry about returning if you do not think you can, I promise no one will bother you here. Will you be alright if I leave you?”

He nodded, even though the hollowness in his stomach cried out that he could not be left, not again.

“Let me know if you need anything at all, now or any time,” she said, rising. “I do not know if you remember my name, your mother introduced us only briefly – ” her voice caught, and Maeglin felt an echoing tightness in his own throat. “ – but I am Idril.”

“Idril,” he said raspily, his voice rough from bile and tears.

She nodded, hesitated, and then touched his fingers – once, quickly, like how Aredhel would dart out her hand to catch a bright-bug. When she pulled back, her own fingertips were tacky with drying blood.

“I will check on you again later,” she said, and turned to leave.

“Wait,” he said, his hands flying to his head. “Your – your clip – ” He fumbled with his tangled hair, fingers feeling delicate detailing, clearly a very fine ornament indeed. He would have loved to examine it closer, but instead he held it out to her, a few dark hairs caught in its filigreed wings in his haste to pull it free.

“Oh,” said Idril, looking down. “Oh, no, you can keep it.” She hesitated once more, and Maeglin wondered if she was going to touch him again. She didn’t. “Please, it is no trouble, Cousin.” She said the word carefully, and Maeglin felt it laid down between them like an offering. “I will be back, after.”

Maeglin believed her.

Idril made for the door, apparently unaware of the long lock of hair that had fallen free of her elaborate coiffure and now curled down her back like a descending vine.

Maeglin held his cousin’s golden butterfly close to his breast, his mother’s heartstrings still between his teeth, and watched until she was out of sight.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Idril_ **

_I’m glad to know that when I’m gone I’ll still be with you, lending you strength_.

Idril had thought her aunt’s strength lay in her dauntlessness, but she ought to have known better. She knew her own qualities well enough, knew that she had, if not the brashness that let her aunt laugh in the face of terror, a quiet sort of courage that would keep her moving even in when fear dug its claws into her heart.

No, bravery was not what she had needed and not what Aredhel had given her.

What she felt now, climbing the stairs of her father’s tower, was an itching restlessness that sped her steps until she hitched up her skirts and ran, white marble spiralling dizzily all about her, bare feet slapping on the stone.

She burst through the door at the very top and stood panting upon the rug, digging her toes into the pile of it for an anchor.

“Idril!” said her father, turning from the window and favouring her with a slightly puzzled smile. “The council’s not for an hour yet.”

“I wanted to see you first,” she said, going up upon her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

Tiptoes or not, she never would have reached had he not leant down to meet her. “And glad I am of it, but I know even my own daughter never bothers with all those stairs without an ulterior motive. Is this about the new school in the plaza of lamps?”

“No, Father. I’ve already found the funds, assuming you approve my revisions to the budget.” Under his bright, indulgent gaze, the speech that she had long rehearsed seemed to have fled beyond recall. “I wished to speak of the gates.”

The joy the sight of her had awoken faded swiftly. “We’ve spoken of the gates. At length. What more is to be said?”

“I don’t think to change your mind. I only-”

“What is there left for us beyond them? Beleriand lies in ruins with all the dreams of our House. Our family are all dead or worse than dead. Should I let our people out to serve as sport for orcs and wargs? We led them into madness and folly, Idril, and it is for us to keep what’s left of them safe. It is our duty.”

“It is their safety that weighs upon my heart.” Her hands, still tangled in her skirts, clenched tight, crumpling the velvet and she forced them to relax. As a little girl she had never been one to resort to tears and tantrums to persuade him, any more than she was now. “Father, if we are found-”

The King of Gondolin favoured her with another smile, bleak as the winter sun that shone outside. “Then we die. If we fight, we die. If we run, we die. You did not see the Nirnaeth, my daughter. Against such strength, there can be no answer. Your uncle was a fool and followed a greater fool to his ruin. Our only hope now lies in our secrecy.”

 _Our hope lies in the West and comes from the sea_. Idril bit her lip. “I agree, Father. Let us suffer no one to leave, and none to enter. Let us strengthen our walls and our enchantments. But let us not close off every escape lest our city turned from a shelter into a trap.”

“I’d ask what’s gotten into you but I think I know. Aredhel is still finding ways to vex me.” Her father’s voice was light but Idril saw the shuttered pain in his eyes and heard the unsteadiness in his voice.

“It is not Aredhel that moves me,” Idril snapped, she who was so measured in her speech. But was that peevishness Idril’s or her aunt’s? In the months before her flight, Aredhel had been restless and irritable, pacing the battlements and then running them, arguing with her ladies, speaking always of open skies and open seas and _escape_. “It is not Aredhel,” she said again, more softly. “And even if it were, I think we would do well to listen.”

Better to her than to her son, for Maeglin was deep in her father’s council now. Deeper even than her which she tried not to resent, remembering a boy curled upon the bed in the gloom of a forgotten bedroom, clutching her hairclip tight in bloody hands. If he was so eager to please that he said only what the king wanted to hear, blame that lickspittle Salgant and the bones lying amidst the rocks beneath their walls. If she caught him staring after her, dark looks from beneath dark lashes, blame the memory of his weakness. She thought often that perhaps she should reassure him that, however much his councils vexed her, she would never speak of how he had wept that day, how he had retched the blood of his mother’s great heart into a bowl, but surely that would shame him more?

Idril was not sure how best to deal with him. Or with her father, who still looked at her, stern and sad. Perhaps, she though, her mistake was in trying to deal with them at all. Aredhel had not let them keep her back in Valinor. Or Gondolin. Or Nan Elmoth. She had flown every cage they thought would hold her. She would not have let them hold her back from what must be done.

“You’re right, Father,” Idril said. “Seal the gates.”

_For I shall make my own._

* * *

**_Turgon_ **

“The princess has been to see you, then?”

As always Maeglin seemed to appear as if from nowhere, the black of his clothes absorbing light as effectively as the shadows he preferred. Turgon turned a tired smile on him, his heart lifting to see his nephew – his heart’s son – standing in his chambers. In these days when he and Idril felt rooted on opposite sides of a greatening divide, when the anxiety gnawed his stomach and the rolling hills of the un-reclaimed dead haunted his dreams, Turgon found Maeglin a solace where none other existed.

“She has,” said Turgon, rubbing his eyes and feeling a flicker of shame in how he had spoken to her. However bitter his grief and resentment, he should not have spoken so of the dead king who had always adored Idril.

(But grief and resentment still ruled him, unsatiated as they were by any final feast.)

(In the days after the battle when he and Maedhros had fought with messengers and blame and, once, a midnight recovery crew over the rights to Fingon’s trampled bones, he did not always know who he hated more – his cousin, for leading their king to his fate, or his brother, for letting him.)

“Is she still fighting you on the gates?” Maeglin’s dark eyes were watchful, lighting first on the downward turn of Turgon’s lips and then the tightness of his hands.

“I think she has finally yielded on that point,” said Turgon, though he felt uneasy about it. “But your cousin has stubbornness enough of her own, even without the gifts of her mother and yours.” He sighed and turned away, and so missed how Maeglin’s eyes went flat and his mouth thinned. “Truth be told, it is her yielding that frightens me more than her opposition – I fear what fresh battle it may precede.” Or what worse occurrence it might betray. For even more than his daughter’s anger he feared the power of his sister’s blood in Idril’s restless feet and yearning heart. What if she too came to view Gondolin as no more than a gilded cage? What if she too loved her freedom more than she loved him? It was the subject of many a night’s dark thoughts but now to his surprise he found himself speaking his fears aloud, opening up his worries as he had not since long before Aredhel left. He spoke of them without raising his eyes or his hands, turning them out at Maeglin’s feet that his burden might be halved.

It felt like a tremendous weight being lifted to reveal them.

Maeglin was looking at him as he finished speaking, his hands in their dark gloves clenched on the back of a chair. “You think she may flee? Truly?”

“I do not know,” said Turgon, sinking into his own chair. “Perhaps it is only fear that guides my thoughts so. But the patterns I see in her are like those I saw in Aredhel in the days before she left, and I worry.”

“Then the gates have never been more necessary,” said Maeglin shortly. He turned away and fished his smoked glasses from an inside pocket, settling them on his nose so he could look out the window over the city. “You must speak to the guards who failed your trust before – that Glorfindel, that Ecthelion, and the other one – and let my mother go astray. I will speak to the captains I know as well, and we must spread it through the city that whomever the princess approaches must _not_ acquiesce to aiding in any escape. Salgant will help, he can spread a message better than your stiff soldiers with their protocol.” He paused, seeming to guess that he might have overstepped and said something offensive. “Not that I think any of your people are untrue or ill-trained,” he said after a moment. “It is only that the soldiers, who love their princess dearly, might have a hard time telling her no. And so we must make sure they do not feel such conflict and make it clear that if they love her, as do – we all, they must act for her safety.” He turned back and Turgon watched him, trying to see behind those flat, grey lenses. He could not and so he watched Maeglin’s mouth instead, soft and full and far less like Eol than any other part of him. “We must keep the princess safe,” said Maeglin. “And the city. But do not worry, your high – Uncle,” he said the word as he dropped his glasses and looked into Turgon’s eyes.

Turgon felt a surge of powerful emotion and a desire to draw the boy close to his breast. But he knew the gesture would be met with confusion and wariness and so he held back.

Maeglin was still speaking. “I have taken precautions. She shall be safe from attempted escape.” He smiled and in that moment he was almost beautiful. “The outermost gates lock from without as well as from within.”

* * *

**_Salgant_ **

“There is no one else that I can ask,” said the prince, “No one so well suited to the task.”

Salgant did not preen because it was beneath his dignity, but it did fill him with pride to see the man who had grown from that frightened scrap of a child that he has saved those fifty years ago. A man of wisdom and integrity, who remembered well his friends and their many accomplishments.

“I’ll gladly speak to the guards,” he said. And then added, because he felt the acid twinge of suspicion in his gut, “But against what need? Why would the princess wish to leave? Are we not safe here? Does she know something?”

Behind those smoked glass lenses, Maeglin’s eyes narrowed. Such lenses had become a fad amongst the younger nobles and Salgant, always ahead of court fashion, possessed several pairs of his own. He was not wearing them today since the weak winter sun rendered them rather unnecessary, but he wished now that he had. It was unsettling to know his face was being read while he was able to see so little of the prince’s expression.

“Her new husband, that conniving creature of the Engwar, has filled her head with fear and lies. Idril is...pure. Innocent. It is small wonder if she does not think to doubt him.”

Salgant thought of Idril, not yet come of age, cleaning the ceremonial knives, blood frozen to a crust upon her face. He remembered her not so many years ago, slipping back into her aunt’s funeral feast. She had taken up a long shinbone and with all the grace proper for a princess, broke it open to get at the sweet marrow. Not a fleck of grease had marred her pale raiment. “Pure. Yes,” Salgant agreed. “I shall carry it to the guards, of course, but would you not do better attacking the problem at its source?”

“That is boldness I would not expect from you, Salgant,” said Maeglin, peering owlishly over the rims of his lenses. Salgant opened his mouth to defend his courage, but the prince went on; “But it is a risk we need not take. Safer to wait! Give it sixty years and the Usurper will die of his own accord, and our princess will be free of his influence.”

Salgant realised that his mouth was still open and he closed it with an audible snap. Was that a joke? Was he supposed to laugh? Was it a test? Had Salgant utterly misinterpreted his words? Maeglin was still peering at him over his spectacles, a faint smile upon his lips, and Salgant had no idea how to respond.

The laugh he managed was as far from his usual carefully cultivated tones as the braying of a donkey in heat - or Ecthelion’s latest ballad. “Too droll, my prince.” And onto firmer ground; “I do wonder that such a...a pure and innocent creature as our lady can bear to let that beast touch her. I saw him in the baths and thought a bear had wandered in, so thick is his foul pelt.”

It was Maeglin’s turn to laugh - it was not forced as Salgant’s had been but even more awkward, the only break in his smooth, practised persona. Salgant liked to make him laugh for that reason; as a reminder of the power he still held over the boy. He needed that reminder more and more in these strange days.

A couple more jokes about the Man’s unloveliness, one about the size of his member, not repeated because it made the prince’s face grow dark again, and Salgant took his leave to do his bidding.

It was important to keep cultivating the boy - as the king withdrew into his tower, more and more the prince spoke with his voice - but it was with a growing sense of disquiet that Salgant did so.

When he thought back to their first meeting, it was not the tears that came to mind now but the gristle caught between sharp teeth.

* * *

**_Maeglin_ **

Maeglin had expected the visit so that when it came, he was ready. The confrontation was just what he would have done, though with less bluster and cheerful arm gripping.

“Greetings,” he said, extricating his wrist from Tuor’s grasp and readjusting the galvorn sleeve he wore on his dominant arm. “To what do I owe the pleasure of a visit from the Lord of the House of the Wing?”

It was a sign of the Man’s credulity and lack of sophistication that he did not pick up on the clear derision in Maeglin’s tone and instead smiled guilelessly. “I come to address some concerns on behalf of the princess.”

Maeglin had been ready for it but still his fingers twitched involuntarily. He sought to still them, tucking his thumbs into his elbows. There were blades in his sleeves as well as one beneath the desk, he reminded himself, and his heart rate slowed. “I do not believe it is appropriate for us to speak of my royal cousin without her knowledge,” he said. It was not true, but it was a line he had learned from one of the stiffer captains, the one with the flute and the excessively long spear, when he had attempted to get a better sense of the princess’s daily schedule. He had, of course, been inquiring merely for her benefit – his gifts would find their way to her more expediently if he knew her whereabouts – but the efficacy of the sentence as a conversation stopper had stuck with him.

It had no apparent effect on Idril’s husband.

“Not in this case, I don’t think,” he said. “I am hoping to avert, um, a nastier confrontation – ”

Maeglin’s eyes widened and his fingertips pressed against the hilts of his daggers. “Is that a threat, cur?”

Tuor shook his shaggy head. He himself was unarmed, no sword at his belt or bulges in his clothing, but Maeglin watched his hands tensely. “Not a threat, Maeglin, just a likely alternative if we don’t settle some things now. My lady wife, you see – ”

He would insist on rubbing that phrase in. Maeglin could have screamed, but he caught a flicker of gold out of the corner of his eye – another butterfly he was preparing for Idril’s mid-week gift – and he fought to calm himself. “ _Our_ lady is the most noble of my people and a goddess among yours. I shall not abide your rudeness in her name, as she would never make such roughfisted attempts at negotiation, being the epitome of quiet courtesy and charm – ”

“You bloody conniving devil!”

The door burst open and Idril flew in with her hair in the two simple braids as she wore for sparring and a look of abject fury on her face. Maeglin and Tuor both took a step back, but it was Maeglin at whom she leveled an accusing finger. Even in her rage she was glorious, and Maeglin took a moment to bask in the glow of her attention.

“You!” she cried. “What have you been telling my captains? What sneaking, cajoling, manipulative – ”

“Idril,” Tuor began, “that is why I am here, we can sort this – ”

She ignored him, which gave Maeglin a certain amount of vindictive pleasure. “You have been telling them to beware of me!” Idril advanced on Maeglin and he felt she must sense how his spirit arched towards her, even as he retreated to the desk, thrilling to the sound of her voice. “I couldn’t figure why they had been so odd and then I got it out of Duilin – she said your flunky, that bard creature, gave her some innuendo laced excuse about my lack of _self-control!”_

So much for the so-called discipline of Gondolin’s military. Maeglin glanced down at the floor, saw her bare feet, and immediately glanced up, his cheeks scorched with his usual reaction to the sight of her exposed. “My lady is misinformed as to the intent of my instructions,” he said, regaining his composure. “She need not react with such hysteria to – ”

“Do not silk your tongue on me,” she said, her eyes snapping. “I am not my father, to be won over by tender titles and false compliments, I do not crave love so much to come crawling for yours. Tell me why you have been lying to my soldiers. Tell me why you have been keeping them away from me.”

“I have done no such thing.”

“Liar!” she cried. “By the Valar, if I did not know any better, I would think you had been gnawing the bones of your father.” She snapped her mouth shut as soon as she spoke the words, clearly knowing she had gone too far.

Maeglin’s cheeks did not burn anymore, and he felt calmer, colder, as the blood left his face.

Idril exhaled very slowly. Maeglin could smell the sweetness of her breath on the air, and reveled in the regret in her eyes. “I did not mean that,” she said finally. “That was coarse speech, and I beg your pardon. But,” she said, and her voice was strong again, “you will mark me, Maeglin. You will tell the captains – and my father – that any orders involving me that you might have made are hereby revoked. You will never go to my soldiers behind my back, and if I catch that simpering singer attempting anything, I will bind him to you on a short leash.” She pointed again. “And I do not want you taking council with my father when I am not there. I do not trust you not to take undue advantage of his loneliness and dread – he deserves to have someone who will tell him _no_ , rather than one who will stroke his fear into error. I am his heir and regent, _do not forget it_.”

“I do not forget anything, my lady,” said Maeglin quietly.

She looked at him a long moment, and it was as many that had passed between them, when she seemed to be seeing something in his past rather than the present. He felt his hands curl, involuntarily, into claws, felt a phantom weight between them. There came a tightening in his throat and he swallowed convulsively, a tang of iron on his tongue. He did not meet her eyes now, his gaze drawn to the pulse he could see fluttering in Idril’s throat, the beat of her strong and noble heart.

He hesitated, doubt crawling from nowhere. He opened his mouth to say something, he knew not what, but then Idril stepped back. She had laid a hand on her belly almost unconsciously, and the solicitous look Tuor shot her sent a terrible certainty spiraling through Maeglin.

“Good,” was all she said. “See that you don’t.”

The princess left, her husband at her side. If Maeglin looked closely, he could still see the prints of her bare toes on the polished black stone of his lintel before they faded as the warmth left them.

He turned back to his desk and flicked open the secret documents he had been compiling, the new materials he had planned for the reinforcement outer gates. The resources of Gondolin would not be enough for his intentions, he saw now, he must go further afield.

Deeper afield.

Fingers stroking the galvorn of his right arm, Maeglin began to make his plans to ensure that the princess never left the stronghold of the city. Her swain – and their issue – were a problem to be solved at a later date.

The gold of the butterfly gleaming in the corner of his eye, Maeglin set to work.


End file.
